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Feb Entry: Brigatines Rest

It's been month's (probably over a year) since I last fully participated in a Challenge - I tried a few month's ago, but got too busy to finish that challenge. I definitely got an idea in mind and I'm forcing myself to fit this in, this month.

Brigatine's Rest, Barker Bay is the tentative name for this. I'm planning to create a kind of map, I've never done before, nor seen an example here, at least not off the top of my head. I am creating an isometric cross-section map.

This will be some cove or bay with rocky, silty sea floor with a partially buried (in the sand) brigatine pirate ship sunken at the bottom of the bay. Since the ship is buried in the silt, doing a cross-sectional map will depict the buried portion of the ship, also will show the layers of silt build up and cross-sections of rock and the shore. I plan to include some flowing kelp below the turbulent surf, and maybe a school of fish, shark and octopus or squid in the water.

For extra complex detail, I plan to create a rough water's surface with waves and surf crashing against the cliffside shore behind and to the sides of the map. I plan to make the water's surface only partially transparent, as a clean separation between under water and above water. Then I'll create a ravaged rocky shore with maybe a light house or captain's home on the cliff top.

So far all I've created is the cross-section aft view of the ship interior, and have added a pile of cannons and ball for the gun deck. I plan yet to create crates, barrels and chest piled up in the ship's hoard on the lower deck. I've created the reference images in 3D using Nendo, my preferred subdivisional surface modeler, which was imported to Raydream Studio (my old 3D rendering program) to simulate the pile of loose cannons, then I printed in b/w, placed tracing paper on top, hand-drew the line work, scanned it into my computer to create the image below...

I plan to have the ship be 80% buried in sand with only the bow and forecastle peeking out (away from the viewer) to the rear of this cross-section interior view, with some broken masts peeking out of the sand, perhaps loose rope and torn sails.

I will add the pile of crates of the hoard next, followed by the cross-section end of the silt bottom next. This should take me several days to complete the challenge.

Next I created a hoard of chests, barrels and crates placed in the lower hold. For extra ship architecture, I placed a grain store on the left side to make the lower hold more inclusionary, rather than an open hold.

Next onto the cross-sectioned seafloor silt deposits, rocks and cliff-face...

OK, before the cross-section itself, I wanted to do what I thought would be most difficult regarding the ship itself, and that was the portion sticking out of the sand. So here it is with the cross-section interior of the ship placed where it ought to be in relationship to the unburied portion. I created a mast piece, but it wasn't tall enough, so I'll do that again. Then I'll get to the cross-section of terrain...

Here's a rough plan of my intentions. The following image is only a very rough, digitally drawn plan of the cross-section, the sea floor, the cliffside, the water's surface and the topside of the rocky coastline. As you can tell, this really isn't an isometric map, though I may still throw in an isometric square grid on the sea floor when I'm done. The water surface is almost on the viewing plane (slightly less). Of course there will be tons of hand-drawn detail to make the sea floor, ocean denizens and cliff terrain interesting.

I'll print this out as a 24" x 24" b/w print on my large format laser printer, which I'll place tracing paper on top and create all the hand drawn detail, then scan as lineart into my large format scanner, import to Xara Xtreme Pro 4, and finish with color and shading.

I will do my best to make this interesting. OK, the last thing I'm doing tonight, the detailed drawing of the terrain and the base terrain shading. I've yet to do the water's surface. I want that to be very detailed with foam and a vibrant blue, all opaque, no transparency as a firm separation between above and below the water. Next I'll create the kelp beds, seaweed, sea life and maybe a flock of sea birds above the waves. Then some structure on the rear hill, or perhaps a shepherd and some sheep...

Now I'm going to bed. I had to finish the water's surface though, it was driving me nuts being drawn, but uncolored. So I fixed that, lightened the blue of the sub surface area, added a wall shadow in the octopus/squid cave, placed a refracted water effect on the sea floor (very subtly). Now to bed...

Kelp and seaweed done. Next to animal life forms. For labeling, I decided, no grid, but I'll place a depth gauge in fathoms or feat to the left side and a distance gauge in feet at bottom and maybe some annotation at the ship and shore structure. Almost done, probably tonight or tomorrow.